Alex Wild

After some consideration, I have decided to move Myrmecos back to its original location: http://myrmecos.net/ I apologize for making everyone change RSS feeds and bookmarks twice in recent months. What’s worse, I can’t promise that Myrmecos won’t move again in the near future. Some intriguing offers have arrived in my inbox and I am thinking…

And while you’re doing that, I have answered the Monday Mystery back at my tried and true wordpress blog. I will be blogging at the old digs for the next few days until I have had time to digest the unfortunate recent events here at Scienceblogs. What’s going on? I’ll let my excellent sciblings explain:…

Eristalis, the drone fly Urbana, Illinois Easily mistaken for a bee, Eristalis is in fact a clever mimic capable of luring many an unsuspecting observer into the land of amusing taxonomy fail. But the structure of the antennae, the broad attachment of the abdomen to the thorax, and the presence of only a single pair…

I would like to point out that when an Australian says “pot plant“, they mean house plant. We had some issues with this linguistic distinction when Mrs. Myrmecos first moved here from Melbourne and started telling everyone about the great pot plants we were growing on the porch. I do congratulate the fine folks at…

Ok, bug experts. Who is this charming little insect? Points will be awarded for the first correct guess: five for family and five for genus. The cumulative points winner for the month of July will win either 1) any 8×10 print from my insect photo gallery, or 2) a guest blog post on the (safe-for-work)…

Our garden bees, photographed yesterday evening: As you may have noticed, in painting our hives we’ve eschewed the standard hive whitewash in favor of pleasing pastels. But we’ve got nothing on the hive art produced by other beekeepers on the web. Below the fold is a selection of my favorites:

Tapinoma sessile Ant ecologist extraordinaire Rob Dunn sends along the following request: We are looking for live colonies of Aphaenogaster rudis Temnothorax curvispinosus or T. longispinosus Crematogaster lineolata Tapinoma sessile from anywhere within their ranges. If you are potentially willing to contribute colonies we would be very grateful. Please contact Sarah Diamond (sediamon@unity.ncsu.edu) regarding details.…

Leptinotarsa decemlineata Urbana, Illinois Meet the Colorado Potato Beetle. If I had to make a list of ten insects all people should know, I’d probably put this one on it. Leptinotarsa decemlineata is a walking case study in evolutionary ecology. Anyone with a potato patch will recognize this large, pin-striped beetle as a particularly voracious…

Forensic entomologists, of course. These are the strong-stomached folks who study the arthropod fauna that colonizes dead flesh. Their knowledge of insect taxonomy, ecology, and development can be used to provide estimates of the time and conditions of death. Or zombification, in the present case. Hypothetically, suppose a zombie shuffles along to my house at…